Alvarado brings big-fight excitement — and there’s nothing like it — to Colorado

Muhammad Ali and Lyle Alzado at a promotional press conference in advance of their July 1979 “fight” at Mile High Stadium. Photo by Jerry Mellman

A young boxing scribe’s credential from 1987’s Leonard-Hagler fight.

I’ll be at the Mike Alvarado-Ruslan Provodnikov fight Saturday night in Broomfield, and will be planning to write about it in my Monday sports section commentary.

I can’t help it. Boxing has me hooked. I don’t rationalize that by making boxing into something it isn’t, either. I’ve never offered any attempt at “sweet science” rationalization.

It’s a dirty, grubby, often crooked sport — and that’s before you get to the seamy underbelly. I have very foggy memories of watching the Gillette-sponsored Friday Night Fights on NBC as a kid, before the long-running series left the air in 1960. Two years later, I was watching television the night when Emile Griffith dealt a fatal beating to Bennie “Kid” Paret, who died ten days later.

I’ve covered it at several Olympics and was in the arena when Roy Jones Jr. was robbed of a decision in Seoul and Evander Holyfield was victimized by a bizarre disqualification in Los Angeles. On the professional level, I’ve covered everything from the virtual club fights at Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s Escuela Tlateloloco in Denver in the 1970s to many championship and high-profile bouts in Las Vegas — starting with undefeated Denver heavyweight Leroy Jones fighting Larry Holmes for a title behind Caesars Palace in March 1980. One of the better Colorado fighters I covered and profiled was Ronnie Cisneros, Mike Alvarado’s biological father.

That Jones-Holmes fight was a few months after I covered Muhammad Ali’s 1979 exhibition match against Broncos defensive end Lyle Alzado, a former Golden Gloves boxer, in Mile High Stadium. Actually, the buildup was more fun to cover than the fight itself, with Ali coming through town a couple of times to promote ticket sales (it didn’t work) and giving me a couple of chances to interview and be around Ali. Jones fought on the undercard.

Later in Las Vegas, I covered a handful of Ray Leonard’s fights — against Thomas Hearns (twice), Marvin Hagler and Donny Lalonde — plus Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney and several Mike Tyson bouts. I included two chapters — “Muhammad Ali and the Heavyweights” and “Leonard vs. Hearns vs. Hagler” — on boxing in Playing Piano in a Brothel.

Some tend to scoff when folks like me — and I’ve covered most of the major events at one time or another — advance the argument that there’s nothing like the electric atmosphere of a big fight. And by that I mean, still, boxing. Perhaps it has changed in the years since I was a regular at the big Vegas fights, but I’m thinking it’s still extraordinarily exciting.

No, Broomfield isn’t Las Vegas. What happens in Broomfield … well, usually not much happens in Broomfield. But I’m looking forward to the big-fight atmosphere, because I hope and even assume it will be electric. I’ve known Alvarado for a few years now and followed his roller coaster of a career — roller-coaster because of his out-of-the-ring personal issues and not because of any lack of success in the ring as he progressed toward bigger fights.